IN OUR OWN WAY (SECRETS AND TOTEMS BY THE WILDFLOWERS)

I thought a storm would come because such was foretold, and not a figurative one but a literal one. So I headed out earlier than usual and our little trinity, the dogs and I, went up a large hill.  From afar, it could be seen that the hill held wonderful green grasses that danced over in the breeze plus purple, red, and yellow wildflowers well wrought and placed in patches all around. The sun was bright and the sky relatively clear at that time, which was the morning hours still. There would be no people, because they went in the other directions. There was nothing against the souls, but they could not compare to what the trees and summits, the ridges and labyrinthine pathways could offer. What was that? Some Gnostic or esoteric secret that can’t be portrayed in words really. Secrets and totems among and as the strange moths, the yellow butterflies, the surprising spiders, the small milk snake, the garter snake, nest of eggs, watchful hawks, webs, berries, moss, travelling clouds, quiet and somehow sagacious tree trunks, stoic old toads, coy deer, and many other.

First, there was a problem. The rain and the sun and the placement of the incredibly large hill with a long and wide plateau, had become more overgrown that I could have imagined. Halfway up the hill I noticed that nature was not as kind as she looked, and that she was also not going to give away her secrets for free. This means that the underbrush, the stems, the many hundreds, even thousands of wildflowers and weeds and grasses had become mixed, long, braided, imbedded, curled,- and were not unlike the dangerous undertow of the tropical or sub-tropical seas. They grabbed at me and pulled my feet down. Sometimes a shoe would fall off. The going was slow. If there was a rock or crevice, of which there are a few, it could not, as was previously usually the case, be seen. But it was too late to turn back, almost safer to proceed, or safer, yes safer, in that the plateau and beyond would be easier. I went slowly, carefully, for I had not a choice in the matter anyhow.

Eventually I made it. Resting atop the large hill it felt like a mountain. I had made it to the quiet place where there were no people and the canines, happy, ran around, sniffed, played, rested, watched the forest walls on all sides. It had gone from a bit cool to hot, - and we took our time among the dirt and small rocks, having made it up the incline. Going down, an uninitiated soul would not know the way, the small path was again covered in tall weeds, flowers, grasses, strange growths I do not know or forget the names of. But I knew the place.

Down and down, carefully, to where the birches, a family of them, had blown over and stayed like that, resembling a display of large bows that protected the new forest entrance. And there I was. There is a little pole that once held up a fence. I fought my way through the trees and thought of forest guides in certain old movies that used a machete to go through the verdant and thick bushes in some deep and unknown southern land of rain and serpents, of quicksand and mudslides and various exotic dangers.

And t

And then the open path, - sane, curt, plowed, cut, wide, easy if a bit hot and mosquito laden. We went on to see the berries and the old discarded tractor parts that lived in the middle of fields. We saw a dragon fly and an odd bird that, once startled by our approach, flew far away. We amused ourselves and laughed and lounged in our own manner, becoming willfully lazy under the sky that had a few perfect white clouds added by some unseen hand. I know where good water is. I know where to go and where not to go. I know our limits and our moods, atmospheres, pace, cadence, et cetera. I know I and I know us, - as much as I can. Soon enough, we circled around by the old bird’s nest, went past the sandpit, headed back into the forest along a known and certain path,- and went along and in and through the good and quiet and shaded ways that would bring us via an old route to where we began.

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